


nothing like a fresh abrasion (to win your love)

by smithens



Series: a love that won't sit still [10]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Averted Suicide Attempt, Bathing/Washing, Caretaking, Depression, Dialogue Heavy, Domesticity, Epistolary, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:40:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27691526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens
Summary: Nobody's written a handbook on making your lover want to live again.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Series: a love that won't sit still [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1747162
Comments: 17
Kudos: 91





	nothing like a fresh abrasion (to win your love)

**Author's Note:**

> > there's nothing like a broken arm  
> to win your love  
> there's nothing like a fresh abrasion  
> to win your love, oh, now  
> you can work on your bedside manner  
> and you can make me feel like I matter  
> and there's nothing like a broken arm  
> to win your love
> 
> — [Jesca Hoop, "Hospital (Win Your Love)"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqXSfHO-7f0)
> 
>  **content notes:** graphic depiction of suicidal ideation and methods of suicide/self-harm, implied/referenced intensive mental health treatment, implied/referenced animal death, implied/referenced sexual consent issues, implied/referenced homophobia, descriptions of bodies and eating habits, domestic conflict, invasion of privacy/autonomy. 
> 
> this work is fictional and is written with the intention of reflecting social attitudes in the setting (1930s England). it does not necessarily portray modern best practices, nor does it necessarily depict the opinions of the author (me).
> 
> the [International Suicide Prevention Directory](https://suicideprevention.wikia.org/wiki/International_Suicide_Prevention_Directory) provides an international listing of suicide prevention resources, such as crisis hotlines & text lines.

**York, October 1933**

"I'm not a _child,_ " Thomas snarls, "if you miss undressing people that bad maybe you had better–"

But the moment Richard clasps his hands between his own he quiets.

He's not entirely sure how he would have kept going.

Thomas has spoken before about treating people poorly—about being unkind, about being sharp, spending all those years at Downton uncared for and paid mind only when something went wrong. Richard has seen the behaviour in action and some patterns have caught his eye… one of the foremost being that Thomas seems to be at odds even with himself in terms of what's worthy of regret and what isn't. He's over the bulk of it, now. Mostly. But the other thing is that he is, Richard thinks, at his worst when he is most unhappy. And the _true_ worst of it happened before they met, perhaps even long before.

Which begs a question, though Richard is afraid to ask it. Afraid to put it into words.

"I only thought I'd offer," Richard tells him, careful. He lets go. "But I'll leave you be."

The thing is, he's not doing a terrific job of caring for himself on his own. It's to be expected, of course. And he hardly had been before, though he'd been much better at hiding it before everything came to light.

Taking matters into his own hands is more difficult than Richard had at first anticipated.

It was the day before yesterday when he came home to find him curled up in the bathtub with an open packet of straight razors in his hand and the tap running, dead-eyed and listless.

Since then he's been a brick wall.

"You will not," Thomas says. "You won't leave me alone for more than a minute, don't you lie to me."

Because there is a very fine line between giving him privacy and giving him another chance to harm himself.

And he is deathly afraid of crossing it.

"...what's the point when I'm not even going anywhere?"

"I think you'll feel better."

If it isn't harming himself it's doing nothing, it's falling into his own head.

Richard has never done—has never had to do—anything like this before.

Making a mistake could be dire. Better safe than sorry.

"And we could go somewhere, later, couldn't we, the weather's fit for it."

_You could do with some sun._

He doesn't know if he can get away with telling Thomas _what he could do with_.

"Well, we'll see if it stays that way," Thomas returns—defiant, but Richard will take it as a win all the same.

"May I?" he tries again.

Thomas only looks at him, suspicion in his eyes.

Fittingly, a breeze passes through from outside, occupying the moment of silence. Autumn air—it makes them both shiver. Earlier in the morning Richard had opened up the windows to get some light in, some fresh air. Most nights they keep the curtains drawn and with good reason, but they don't always get opened back up again.

It's the little things. He's going to endeavour to make them a priority in future.

Drapes tied back, window propped, shutters open. Sunshine.

He wonders if he ought to be concerned about heights.

Just before he resigns himself to giving up, Thomas nods; when Richard gets back to loosening his necktie he goes limp, doll-like. He'd refused this, last night, and there's only so much you can do to get a sleeping man out of his clothes. If his aim is to be dead weight now, he's successful.

But ties are not something you need cooperation for, as long as you have access to the neck, and once it's out from beneath his collar Thomas allows him to undo the waistcoat and slip it over his shoulders, too, if with some degree of reluctance.

Then it's his braces, his trousers, his stockings, shirt and vest—all of it could do with laundering. He has to wonder if Thomas will let him take that particular chore over. They each have pieces of it: Richard mends, gets the more stubborn marks out; Thomas refuses help on most of the rest.

As for what replaces what was removed, they settle, if silently, on pyjamas. With any luck they'll be leaving the house today, and he'll change into something else before they do.

Thomas buttons his own shirt. When he's finished, Richard wraps him in his dressing gown and presses a kiss to his forehead. The affection goes both unrefused and unremarked upon, though Thomas does have something to say:

"Well, we both know what comes next, if you're valeting me properly."

They do; he is.

It's a challenge, plain and simple. He's likely been holding onto it since Richard put the idea forth an hour or so ago. Perhaps he shouldn't have brought up the specifics of grooming.

"You go on to the washroom," Richard says, in the most casual voice he can muster. "I've got to get something from downstairs."

"You're letting me out of your sight, never thought I'd see the day–"

"I'll be quick," Richard tells him.

"Yes, you will be, won't you."

"I keep my word, don't I?"

Or he does lately, at least. Timeliness was never his strong suit before.

Now it feels like more of a necessity.

"I know what you're getting," Thomas replies evenly. "You can't fool me."

He's exhausting because he's exhausted. It's tough. Nobody's written a handbook on _making your lover want to live again_.

"I'm not trying to."

* * *

_Jan 9, 1928_

_Dear Richard,_

_We saw in the papers today about London. You said you were going back to Norfolk soon so I hope you made it. I won't lie and say I'm not worried, because I am. It doesn't look very good from up here, but very little does, does it? You've got a better view than I have. I hope you're all right, and that everybody you know is, too._

_That's all I suppose. I do miss you. I don't like when things like this happen; they make me think too much._

_Yours,_

_T.B._

*

_27/2/28_

_Dear Thomas,_

_As of last night I've finally gone through everything you sent. I haven't touched a book in about a fortnight because of you, but you won't see me complaining—you're the best reading material I've come across in years._

_On 9/1 you wrote about the flood. I just missed it. I went back up to S.H. on the 6th. When we got back we all found that London is rather in shambles. The papers don't show the whole picture. I am safe, dry and housed, with all my (few to begin with) worldly possessions still my own, and I've got no right to complain. But I'm aware now more than ever that my life has a pattern to it, Thomas, and I don't like where it's going._

_For as long as I can remember all I've ever done is "just miss" things, or the things have just missed me. You know about my shoulder, the flu and the arrest—I don't know if I've even the right to call it that anymore after what you went through last summer—but there is more and it's all on my mind, over and over. So many times I've come close to losing it all or nearly but I've been saved in the nick of time by circumstance._

_That's a weight on my shoulders, see. Looking back over my life I can see all the second chances I've been given, and with each and every one of them there was somebody else who suffered where I didn't. I suppose that's hyperbolic. Not 'each and every'. But the times when it happened stick out more, don't they? Well, I hope you can't agree with me on that score due to lack of experience, but then I imagine most men our age have gathered up plenty of regrets same as me, so perhaps that's wishful thinking._

_I'm very glad I made the decisions I did last July. I wish I could have done more. Nevertheless each day I am grateful that I met you and that you have remained in my life. Remember that._

_Yours ever faithful,_

_R.E._

_P.S. I'm posting this second class out of the hope it will reach you on the 29th. I've always thought there to be something special about leap years._

*

_March 9, 1928_

_Dear Richard,_

_Well, everybody has gone and now I have the time to sit down with all of YOUR letters. Are you trying to tell me something? Should I not write so much while you're away?_

_Anyway about your most recent one. I am glad to hear you were safe and sound._

_I don't know that it will be very helpful for me to say this but I think I may know how you feel. If I wrote down every time I almost lost my job this letter would be ten pages long, for example. Or almost got arrested. Or almost got whatever it was I escaped when you came to my rescue last summer. When I think about it, I can't believe I made it that long without ending up behind bars. I've never got in trouble for anything before. Not compared to some people at least. I don't suppose everything that happened when I was a boy counts—I left home before anything very bad happened, so it was only my dad that bothered with giving me any consequences. And I believe that just isn't the same. You may disagree. You like to say you've had it easy compared to me, and I suppose in a way you have. But I spent a long time blaming everybody else for my problems and I've been managing not to for a couple of years now, so I guess I'd better keep it up._

_After I left home I made sure nobody around or above me would have any reason to criticise me. I've always been good at most things I try out (very humble I know) so that part was easy. But people always find things to say anyway so by the time I made to Downton I'd decided it's better give them a reason that isn't that one. I make it sound like I was a very pleasant person before I got to Downton don't I? It would be nice if that were true but sorry to say it isn't._

_Actually Dick to be honest I don't know how sorry I am. At the very least I am not as sorry as I should be. Anybody would agree on that really, if they knew everything I've done and could see the inside of my head. I know that's what they all think here so I do my best to be contrite when I'm given a chance to be._

_The point is that if you've been passed over for horrid things to happen to you then so have I. I don't think that's much to complain about and you'll forgive me for saying so, but I don't think it means you're bound to have something bad happen to make up for it either. That is where you were going with all that wasn't it? Some people are just luckier than others._

_I'm grateful for you, too. Very very grateful._

_ With gratitude, _

T.B.

_P.S. That was a joke, though many a true word is spoken in jest. Also your letter came on the 29th just as you hoped, but I've been busy. We are very busy people aren't we? Maybe that's to keep our minds off all the consequences we should have faced but didn't._

* * *

"You don't trust me," says Thomas abruptly. It breaks the silence that has hung heavy between them since Richard took the shaving kit from its hiding place. He looks up at him then, more than he needs to for him to get the job done properly. There is a dull defiance in his eyes.

They have had this conversation what feels like a hundred odd times in the last two days.

And Richard realises he suddenly doesn't want to put anything sharp near this man's neck.

He will, once he gets over the nagging fear in his gut, once they talk over whatever this is. He will. He's not one to leave a job unfinished, and he has the sense that this one will do them both some good. But for now he puts the razor back in its cloth, and then back in the case, and then the case behind him—well past arm's reach.

He sits back, appraising. They have stood side-by-side before the mirror many a time before now; Richard has seen him do this on his own. Every morning, May to July. Every morning they had together, August to October. But it's different, this time. The white lather of shaving soap on his face is no contrast to his skin, because Thomas is pale, with mottled purple circles beneath his eyes, very little flush left in his cheeks and lips. It's the light that's unflattering; he didn't look so awful, earlier. They haven't got a window in here, so even at their best they don't look it, and the new angle from dragging in chairs surely doesn't help.

Still, Richard suspects that for Thomas it will get worse before it gets better.

But maybe they'll make some progress this morning.

"I do," he replies. "I trust you with my life."

"Just not with mine."

He sounds resigned more than anything else.

In retrospect he ought to have been glad to hear him lash out, earlier. Lately it's rare to hear him anything else but exhausted.

"Put yourself in my shoes a moment," says Richard.

"I'd never be in your shoes," Thomas returns. "You'd never try to off yourself."

Thomas may as well have punched him in the gut; the sensation would be the same.

"Do you think so?" Richard asks, but even as he asks he knows that Thomas has probably got it right. The idea on its own makes him shudder, and try as he may, he can't make himself understand what Thomas has been feeling that had him set on doing such a thing.

He'd thought they were doing well, that he was glad to have moved on, that he enjoyed his work. That he was pleased to be with him and to keep a household. There's no sense in this happening now.

It's got nothing to do with sense, though, does it? If Thomas had his regular amount of sense at the moment this wouldn't have happened.

"I know so."

But he wishes it did, because it's easier to give something an explanation than to write it off as inexplicable. You can't fix a problem you don't understand.

"Anyway, if you trust me so much," Thomas goes on, "where are you keeping that stuff?"

He points.

_Play it off._

"It was in the scullery," he says, because it's not going to be again. He's spent all his time figuring out hiding places, nooks and crannies. "We haven't needed it."

As a matter of fact, he's beginning to think he ought to get everything sharp out of the house entirely. The conundrum is where it would go and how it'd be explained.

They're also going to switch to safety razors, which Thomas is unlikely to be keen on.

At the moment he's glaring at him. " _You_ haven't."

"Well, we're taking care of you at the moment," Richard says, straightening out the towel at his lap, avoiding his eyes, "but if you'd like me to start shaving again I suppose there's no harm in it."

It's easier to keep a lilt in his voice than to look him in the eye and smile as if nothing is happening at all.

"Except if I get a hold of them." Jesus Christ. "Is that it?"

He's not exactly giving him much to smile at.

Hoping his alarm is well-hid, Richard looks back up at him, meets his eyes.

"See? I was right," Thomas pronounces, self-satisfied. Convinced he's won, contented about it. He sits back in his chair and smirks, and Richard thinks, _I don't know how best to love you_. "You don't trust me."

"I trust you to go to any lengths to get out of pain," Richard replies carefully, "and I've decided I'd prefer it if you were on a shorter rope."

"So you're my jailer, then."

"My apologies for preferring you alive, Mr Barrow."

"What you should be sorry for is not considering what _I_ want."

Yesterday he was on the verge of tears, today he's on the verge of driving Richard to them.

Not only that, he seems to be doing it on purpose.

"I think what you want is different than what you'd planned to do." _Don't argue,_ he reminds himself. They can walk down other roads, but he'll do his best not to argue. "But yeah, I am sorry, actually."

Strictly speaking Richard is not a man prone to crying spells, but there is a lump in his throat, and his voice breaks.

It's what gets through to him.

"How can you stand me?" Thomas asks, incredulous.

"Good question," he says. He pulls the kit back over and takes out the shaving razor again for round two; Thomas stares at him, now straightfaced, hands in his lap, thumbs moving in nervous circles at his knees. Richard wills back whatever is budding in the corners of his eyes. "It may have something to do with how much I love you."

* * *

_7/1/31_

_Dear T…_

_..._

_...I am terribly sorry you had to see me in that state, and I wish I could promise you'll never need to again. Unfortunately that's out of my hands. I understand I gave you a fright and for that I do apologise, but I haven't anything else to share. I don't enjoy talking about it. I can't give you answers because I have none, so I beg you not to ask for any. Yet I know I must be honest and tell you it happens far more often than I've wanted to let on. I wish it didn't. I've made heavy use of those words in this letter, haven't I? 'I wish.' Well, I wish plenty of things—whether any of it is worthwhile remains to be seen. Sometimes I expect not. I am comforted, perhaps wrongfully so, by the knowledge that I am not the only man of my age and history who faces what I do, only I wish none of us had to at all._

_Right. As I've said, I can't give you what you've asked for. But I'd like to say 'thanks' in any case. I had forgotten what it means to have somebody else with me when the worst of it happens, and it's a great deal, I can assure you. You kept my feet on solid ground, and I'm grateful._

_Tell me when next you're feeling blue. I'll do my best from afar._

_Yours,_

_R.E._

* * *

Regardless of the complications involved, the anxieties, Richard was right: Thomas feels better when he's clean-shaven. It's a change that occurs in a blink of an eye. He's less combative, less severe. Not _himself_ , not hardly, but he's not lashing out, and for that Richard is grateful. Because everything else—it's painful, and it's exhausting. But he doesn't know if he could deal with the taunting much longer… It's odd how something that he finds so endearing under ordinary circumstances now has him nervous and hollow.

Then, perhaps it isn't.

Under ordinary circumstances it's his sense of humour, it's engaging, it's his own sort of vivacity that's had him captivated since the first day. He can get sharp, to be sure, but more often than not Richard himself isn't actually on the receiving end of that—and the folks who are tend to deserve it.

Today, though, he seems to be goading him into giving up. Daring him, even. Perhaps if it were _giving up_ about anything other than allowing him the opportunity to follow through on the most horrific thing he's capable of, it would be different.

But that's not what they're dealing with.

He claims Richard doesn't trust him, but he hasn't yet said he won't try it again. The attempt at prompting him to do so didn't go over well.

It'll come naturally, he hopes. Eventually. Maybe not today, but he believes it will.

For now he's going to do what he can to keep him moving forward. Taking care of his needs is the first step.

Unlike earlier in the morning, Thomas does as he asks the first time—he lets Richard draw up a proper bath without making a thing of it, and this time, doesn't protest when he tries to get him out of his clothing.

It strikes him as he's lathering up some shampoo powder that he's seen Thomas nude more in the last two days than in the last month.

He puts it out of his mind.

There is something very precious about the act of washing Thomas's hair, something that comes from all of the little pieces combined. Scrubbing at his scalp with his fingertips, hearing him sigh, watching as his eyelids flutter, seeing the tension melt from his shoulders. It reminds him of something.

And God, Richard wants to hear and see more of that, he does, but even he's not optimistic enough to expect that sort of thing from him any time soon.

It's selfish to desire it in the first place.

"It wasn't this bad, before," Thomas says. Out of the blue. Richard continues thumbing at the spiral of hair at his crown and remains silent. "I don't know why I'm like this."

Richard wasn't there; he doesn't know.

"I haven't even done anything," he adds, "I just _wanted_ to, and now I'm– last time I was working right up til the day I tried it," _no change there,_ "and then soon as I was better, back to work again, none of this," he waves one hand, "none of this shit where I can't muster up the strength to brush my own fucking teeth."

But surely the first time he wasn't _better_ in the span of a day and a half… how much of it is the same, when it's the mind that's ill more than the body?

"Yeah," Richard says, swallowing back the lump in his throat, "I don't think that's standard."

Out of a fear he'll be misinterpreted, he adds, "getting back on your feet so soon after a thing like that," but Thomas's words overlap his own: "what's _standard_ is going to the bloody loony bin."

Richard doesn't know what to say.

"Or not trying it at all–why are you even bothering?"

"Bothering," repeats Richard.

"It'd save you the trouble."

"What would?"

"Sending me some place, I dunno. Just tell 'em your boarder's gone mental and then I'm out of your hands."

He wants to ask: _how can you not understand?_

Richard's wondered, actually, if he's the right man for this job. If he isn't, though, he hasn't the faintest idea who would be. Everything he's heard about those places tells him it would make it worse, not better, and it's jumping the gun, besides. You don't call the fire brigade to put out a candle.

It could have been worse.

He could have been late.

 _Haven't even done anything_ , he says. When clearly he'd intended to, when clearly he wouldn't've gone back of his own accord.

He takes a deep breath and fakes a smile, though Thomas can't see it—but it'll help set the tone. Pretending will get him closer to where he ought to be. "Why would I do that?" he asks instead, putting up his best front.

Because he can't fall to whatever level Thomas is on, if he wants to bring him up. Can't tackle this from the same angle.

"Wouldn't it be easier?"

"Nah," says Richard lightly, "it'd be harder."

"I can't see _how–_ "

"Something's slipped your mind," Richard interrupts him, easily. It gets easier as he goes along. "The bit where I want to take care of you."

"Five months of me weighing on your shoulders and you want to take care of me." Thomas scoffs. Richard does his best not to, as he has enough foresight to know that telling Thomas the words that just came out of his mouth are utter horseshit won't go over well. "Maybe you're the mad one."

Hearing the words pokes at something in him. Richard can't tell if it was intentional or not.

"Maybe so." He takes the lull in the conversation to move to the other side of the tub, gets the water going again. It runs hot over his fingers. He watches it fan from his hand into the bath, a waterfall. "Right," he says, "let's rinse this out, shall we."

Dutifully Thomas swivels around to duck his head under the tap, face up. He shuts his eyes, and the water streams back over his head, travels in rivulets down the sides of his face.

He looks incredibly young.

Richard puts one hand over his brow to shield his eyes and the other at his head, shaking his fingers through the short strands of his hair, watching as the suds melt away—dissipating into the water, making the surface cloudy.

They'll want to drain it some, use fresh for the rest of him where they can.

Then, he's not sure about how to approach the next steps here.

Once he's satisfied he shuts the water off; Thomas pulls himself out and sits up, knees to his chest and hunched over. Richard watches as he moves: his spine is prominent from his neck downward; there is a faint hollow beneath his shoulderblades. It's been a slow change over the last several months. He hadn't noticed the extent of it until very recently, and by the time he'd figured out what all was going on it was long past the time he should have intervened. If he were to look at him now and him from a few months ago side-by-side, he's sure the difference would be striking.

Richard takes the sponge from where he'd left it on the pedestal.

"You want to do any of this yourself?"

There is a risk in voicing the question, he knows, that Thomas will fall a few rungs on the ladder, think he's abandoning the job he's just said he was devoted to.

"Well, you won't leave me be to do it, will you," says Thomas, "so no, not especially." He pauses. Hums. "I don't think I'd do it very well, besides."

Richard reaches behind him to pull the plug from the drain. Thomas hardly moves but for sticking his hand over it, his fingers apart; a whirlpool swirls around and between them. As the water lowers there is a faint line of soap around the edge of the tub. Richard will get to it with some elbow grease later.

"I don't know why," Thomas goes on, more quiet. "I haven't got anything else to do, have I. But I keep doing a shoddy job of things even so."

Richard gently pushes Thomas's hand out of the way and puts the stopper back in its place. "I don't think you can be expected to be on top of things all the time."

" _On top of things,_ " he repeats, derisive, "yes, nobody expects a grown man to be able to bathe himself, or change his fucking clothes, or get out of bloody bed in the morning–"

"Not when he's poorly."

It gets him quiet, but only, Richard suspects, because he's trying to switch gears, come up with something else to say.

"You spent a lot of time around the ill and injured once," Richard goes on, before he can. "They didn't do it all on their own, and I'd wager fifteen years out some of 'em still don't." He picks up the bar of soap; Thomas follows him with his eyes as he does. "But they get by, surely."

"Bully for them."

"I think we can grant you the grace to be down for a time, Thomas."

"For a time," he mocks, but then in the blink of an eye his voice is very small: "What if it doesn't go away?"

It hurts just hearing it—Richard has to pause, to think it over. What if, indeed. They could ask questions like that all day long and never get ahead of where they started. "We'll cross that bridge if we come to it."

"You would say that."

"I think it will, though," adds Richard. "I think it'll go away, and you'll be happy again in due time."

"Have I ever been, though? Happy?"

There's the rub. And the trouble is that Richard wouldn't know for certain.

But he knows what he's seen, and heard, and felt. He knows what Thomas looks like when he's smiling; he knows how his laughter sounds. "I think you have been, yeah."

"I don't remember what it felt like if so."

"I wouldn't expect you to."

"And, I _used_ to be on top of things." He takes a deep breath. "I never had a problem before."

"I don't doubt it."

He feels mechanical, saying the things he's meant to with little acknowledgment in return. But he believes them.

"Nobody seemed willing to say so 'til after I'd gone, but I was the most competent person at Downton—maybe not of everybody, 'necessarily, but of–of _my_ jobs, at least, everything I was responsible for, even Carson came round and admitted he hadn't ever known a better under butler, and that was _Carson._ " He pauses. "Well, I'm sure Lady Mary pulled his teeth, to get him to say that. But say it he did."

"Sounds like a ringing endorsement to me."

"He didn't say nice things about me very often—oh, there's that, he didn't tell it to my face I just overheard him saying so to Mrs Hughes—but… I remembered when he did."

Evidently so.

Given the people involved and the role referenced Richard has to wonder how long it's been since the remark was made. How long Thomas has held it in the back of his mind as praise to pull out for a rainy day. Though he often speaks about his tenure at Downton and the people who lived there, this man in particular is generally not the focus of the conversation—when he is, it's generally to do with words that stuck.

This may be the most positive anecdote he's heard.

If he had to guess, there's something there. Thomas knew him longer than he knew his own father, for one. Richard knows about the search for substitutes all too well.

Perhaps it isn't so complex as that; perhaps it is.

At the moment Richard suspects he may be searching too hard for _reasons._

He turns on the tap again and sticks the sponge beneath the flow. He squeezes it. "Tell me more about last time," he says. "We don't talk about it."

"What luxury," Thomas quips, reaching out to feel the hot water; Richard watches. There is an awful pull in his gut. "We're going to ruin the boiler for everybody else."

"It's just this once." He doesn't actually know how long it's been since they got started… but it's mid-morning on a weekday, besides, and their neighbours are working people. Thomas rolls his eyes but doesn't protest, and Richard shuts it off soon enough. Feeling mechanic, he rubs the bar of soap between his hands, then takes hold of his arm, lifts it out of the water. No resistance. "You just went right back to work?" he prompts.

Thomas shrugs. "Soon as I had enough blood in me to stand up and walk and carry again, yes."

"I really don't think that's standard."

Not for the mind nor the body. But he wouldn't necessarily know.

"Well, Clarkson wasn't keen on it, I can tell you that."

(Though a doctor, he imagines, would.)

"Said either more rest or I go somewhere, and they made up a third option and chose that instead."

He gently rubs at Thomas's skin from his collar to his elbow, massaging the top of his shoulder, moving his hands in circles down his upper arm. He hasn't actually done this for anybody in years... There are plenty of times when valeting got personal, but it never went quite this far.

"Course they'd've had to pay to get rid of me."

Richard cups water in his hand and brings it up to wet the hair beneath his arm before going back in with soap. "As is their obligation."

Thomas closes his eyes, but stays upright. "And I had to make up for leaving them to manage the house without me, didn't I? I didn't mind it."

On the defensive.

He knows it's absurd, then. Absurd, unacceptable. Only it happened eight years ago now, and there's nothing either of them can do to change it.

"What else was I meant to do, lay about being useless?"

"Rest isn't useless."

"Says the man who didn't get any for twenty-five years."

"And he'd know best, wouldn't he?"

Thomas ignores him. "And I worked fine," he goes on. As Richard rubs at the inside of his elbow he flinches—ticklish. His eyes open; he turns toward him. Richard stops, and waits. Their gazes meet. Thomas says, "there's no reason I can't do now."

He is aiming to leave no room for argument.

"You've got more on your plate now."

"You make it sound like service was a walk in the park."

"We run a household," Richard persists, "we've got responsibilities."

"What do you think a butler does all day, twiddle his thumbs?"

It's at that moment Richard looks down and discovers he's getting soap on the placket of his shirt. He'd thought he was holding Thomas with two hands; he doesn't know when he started fidgeting. Thomas tilts his head at him, presses his lips and squints.

It's maybe the closest thing to a smile so far.

"Incorrigible."

"Yeah," Richard says.

"Are you gonna finish up over here?"

He is.

Richard gets back to lathering, prays his touch is as light as he thinks it is. As his fingers pass over the ridge from his lower forearm down to the base of his hand he finds he's holding his breath. With the slip of soap the scar feels the same as the rest of him, not taut, not rough. Thomas has his eyes closed and his face forward, lips parted, showing nothing.

He moves on to his hand. He breathes.

"You know it hasn't just been… it hasn't just been, eight years of me not feeling that way and now I am again all of the sudden."

Back in with the sponge, shoulder to wrist in long strokes, and then he lowers his arm back into the water.

"I've felt it before."

Richard remembers.

Somewhere he still has all the letters describing it, too.

"But I never… _decided_ I'd do it again, like this time. I just felt like it."

Washing his other arm is less emotionally taxing. Helps that he's already done it once—and Thomas doesn't even flinch when he gets to the hand.

"You've said."

"Why now, do you think?"

"I don't think I'm the one to answer that question."

Though he's wondered, himself… They spent spring and summer making a home, learning what works best. Thomas said himself he hadn't felt so happy in years.

But that was a few months ago, now, and the seasons are changing.

He gives no reply; Richard sighs. "Would it be worth talking to somebody outside of us?" he asks.

"You're the one who's been to an alienist before," he says, much too lightly to be sincere.

He certainly is.

"That was a while ago," Richard says. "Maybe it's changed."

"Why do I doubt that?"

Probably an accurate assessment.

"We have somebody who talks to the children," Thomas adds. "He's awful."

"An alienist?"

"A psychotherapist."

It actually sounds better, to Richard's ears, but Thomas makes it seem like a dirty word.

"I'm the one who has to bloody pen him in, so I'd know. He leaves 'em in tears half the time and then I get to show him out and invite him to come back soon."

This is a slice of information about his job that it would have been helpful to know beforehand.

"...Besides, I thought you didn't want to pawn me off on anybody."

"I want to do whatever'll help you feel best."

"Feel best," he scoffs, "don't you know what those people do to men like us?"

"I've heard the same things you have–"

"You may as well be saying you'd prefer me without my bollocks–"

"But on the chance we find somebody understanding–"

"Yes, that'll go over swimmingly– just telephone and tell somebody's secretary that your male lover's had a fit of hysteria and decided to slit his wrists for the second time in his life and you think he ought to talk to _somebody understanding_."

Lots he could say to that, but Richard chooses the worst option: "men don't get hysterical."

"You keep telling yourself that, Dick."

"You're melancholic."

"And you're _nervous_ ," he retorts, his voice dripping with condescension, "it all means the same thing, don't fool yourself, because you're _hysterical_ same as I am and you just have a better reason to be, that's all."

The worst things he's ever said to him have all come out in the time since they got up this morning.

"...I'm sorry."

Richard shuts his eyes. He breathes: in through his nose, down below his chest, out through his mouth, just the way Thomas found works for him.

"I'm _sorry._ "

"Is that what you truly think, then," Richard says. He can't bring himself to speak up. "About me."

He knows the answer already, though.

Thomas very rarely says things he doesn't mean.

And...

"No," he says. Terse. Richard opens his eyes. Thomas looks away just for a moment but then looks back. "Well, it is sometimes." _Sometimes._ Being now. Now, and when he wakes him up in the middle of the night because of the nightmares… when they have to put a meal on hold because opening a tin brings something back. When they're at his mum's house and he looks too long at the photographs on the mantel. When a car engine backfires, when he walks through mud. When nothing's happened at all but he ends up derailed anyway. More often than not, he means. "I want to fix it," Thomas adds, "I want to– it's not fair."

Another moment passes before Richard gets a hold of himself— _it's not about you._ They've spoken about this before, he tells himself. There's a difference between having something wrong and _being_ something wrong. Thomas makes himself clear when it most matters, and his opinion may be coloured now.

 _Don't kid yourself_.

"You shouldn't have to– why are you stuck with all that when you're–"

Thomas doesn't trail off so much as halt.

"Que sera, sera," Richard says. He's always been a good actor, when he needs to be.

"Maybe, but I don't see why somebody like you has to put up with– you don't deserve it." He wets his lips, drops his chin to his chest. Blinks. Richard takes the opportunity to start scrubbing at his back. "What did you ever do to deserve it?"

Shooting at men for the sole reason what he was told to comes to mind.

"That's how I feel about you."

"That's just ignorance, that is," Thomas replies. "I'll write you a whole list of why."

"It won't change my mind."

"Well, there're plenty of people who'd agree with me," he tells him, turning back over his shoulder, lips in a tight smile—what he thinks is a smile. It's strained and it doesn't reach his eyes. "I'll ask them, to make sure I get it all."

"Thomas," Richard murmurs.

"They said so. Practically. When it happened."

To say that's unverifiable is perhaps an understatement.

"You don't work at Downton anymore," he says slowly. "And neither do most of those people."

But he kept working for years, after it happened.

What kind of toll did that take?

"They were right, though. Or at least they all agreed."

"I don't know that that's the same as being right."

"And?"

"Right, I'll not be hypocritical–"

"Didn't expect _that_ –"

"And tell you that you should be over it," he presses on, "but it is _over._ "

"It's _been_ over." He's wringing his hands under the water. "I got better and then I left and then they hired me back again at the new year, and that was that."

"Did you?" Richard asks. "Get better?"

_Would we be here right now if you had?_

But he stops himself from voicing that question aloud in the nick of time.

Thomas, too, refrains from speaking his mind, but Richard can sense (from the tension in his muscles, the way in which he breathes) that it's a struggle.

The silence they fall into is awkward but relieving all the same. Inside of it, focusing on the task at hand becomes less of a trial. Just like everybody else Thomas prefers to be clean; he's submissive in allowing Richard to get him there. He sits with his arms resting at the sides and his legs spread as far as they can be within the narrow space, lifting when Richard washes behind his knees, his calves. By the time he's at his feet he's almost relaxed again.

Unfortunately Richard's skills in this arena pale compared to Thomas's own, but if he fails to meet expectations Thomas doesn't say anything about it. He spreads his toes, though, pushes the ball of his foot against Richard's hand. Richard thinks of when he has done the same thing in the middle of particularly heated moments they have shared in the past and has to stop to take a breath.

He misses it.

He doesn't know how much longer he can cope, knowing he's not desired.

The thought turns out to be pertinent not long after it crosses his mind.

"You want to take care of this part on your own?"

"Why, do you not?" asks Thomas. Without any light in his eyes his smirk is disparaging. Maybe it's meant to be. "Don't act like you've never touched me before."

It's been… difficult, learning what a difference the little things can make. A shift in tone, a curl of the lip. When described plainly his affection and his contempt could be indistinguishable.

Richard takes up a flannel. "More hot water?"

"May as well."

And of course he _has_ touched him before, but here it's different: by mood, by purpose, by intention. Despite his tone Thomas allows him to take his time. It's helpful, because they have never touched one another _like this._ Richard doesn't know which part is more strange, the water or the utter sexlessness. At one point Thomas twitches, but he says nothing, head still back and eyes still closed.

Perhaps Richard should have taken it as a cue, because when he keeps going Thomas jolts, the water sloshing. He gives him a sharp glance.

"Feeling optimistic?"

And here's what he'd been afraid of.

"Just being thorough," he replies, swift. But he stops all the same, his heart beating a mile a minute.

"Are you?"

"I don't like your tone."

"Well, I don't suppose anybody could blame you for taking what you want," Thomas goes on. Richard wrings out the cloth, drapes it over the rim of the tub, and braces himself for whatever is coming. "When I haven't been putting it out."

Last night as they went to bed Thomas had tried to start something for the first time in weeks—as though it were an obligation, as though to make up for everything that had happened. As though he could make him forget the prior twenty-four hours if he kissed him enough and in the right places.

He'd had to say, _I know you don't want this._

_But don't you?_

And he hadn't.

"Don't be foolish," Richard murmurs.

But he wonders now if today would be going differently, if he'd let him… the thought brings along with it a sting of shame.

Thomas raises his eyebrows. "Unless you're getting it from some place else," he says, innocent-like, as though it's some novel idea dawning on him for the first time and not an intentional poke in the eye.

 _He's testing the waters,_ Richard reminds himself, _he needs reassurance._

But does he have to be such a fucking ass about it?

"You know I'd never."

"'Cause I'm sure it can't be that hard to find somebody who won't cry when you touch him, not with _your_ face–"

"Would you shut up?"

He hadn't meant to raise his voice (he hadn't meant to say it at all), but raise it he did. Part of him thinks Thomas deserves it—until he sees him shrink, curling up again, pressing the heel of his hand to his brow.

One outburst and now they're back where they were an hour ago.

But he can't just...

"You don't need to antagonize me," Richard adds, still sounding just as irritated as he feels, but he can't bring himself to reel it all back in. "I can get riled up on my own, thanks."

He doesn't know where, when or how to put lines in the sand. It'll come back to bite him if he's not careful.

Perhaps it already has.

"Well, you've made that clear as crystal."

"For God's sake, Thomas."

"Sorry."

"Fuck," Richard says under his breath, and Thomas again says, "sorry," and neither of them can stand to look the other in the eyes.

Richard looks at the ceiling, instead, letting his head loll all the way back. Since they got started he's been sitting and kneeling and crouching in random order, and he can feel now the strain he's put on his own limbs. The last time he bathed somebody it wasn't nearly this exhausting, but the last time he bathed somebody he was many years younger and the circumstances were far from similar.

This feels like the least he can do, and yet trying to accomplish the task is walking a minefield.

He has done more than enough of that for a single lifetime.

"You should go."

"Sorry?"

Thomas only repeats himself: "you should go."

Richard looks back down at him and doesn't see anything that provides an explanation. "I don't know what you mean."

"Just… five minutes. Take the stuff with you, I don't mind."

"Five minutes," Richard repeats.

"Yeah. Five."

Richard stands. Wary though he is, he seizes the opportunity to gather up the shaving miscellany. As he does it's as if he can feel Thomas's eyes at his back.

"...more or less. Up to you."

Probably less, if he indulges him at all.

"Go look out the window or something," Thomas goes on, "get a break from me—you've got a watch, haven't you?"

In his pocket.

"If I go…"

"What could I possibly do, drown myself?"

"Will you?" Richard asks, setting his voice with care, keeping his eyes keen. There's more effort required than there was before because he's _tired_ , he's so damn tired, and it's setting in now just how much.

All the more reason to stop smothering him.

"No," says Thomas, resolute. "I'm not gonna do anything; it was a joke."

"It wasn't funny."

"Well, then I won't tell it again."

Yeah, he needs a fucking break.

"Five minutes," Richard confirms.

"Go on," Thomas replies, "go," and Richard does, but he leaves the door propped all the way open—it wouldn't close right even if he forced it, after breaking the lock, and Richard took some precautions the night of, but it makes him feel better.

It probably does not do the same for Thomas. The thought gnaws at the back of his mind.

He checks his watch; he checks the clock on the wall. He goes downstairs and hides things away. The next chance he has to get them out entirely he'll take it. That's the only thing he's sure of, the only thing he knows to do… get rid of second chances. The rest he's got to play by ear.

For a man who has gone his whole life improvising (and taking joy in it, at that) he is doing a bloody awful job of the same now.

At a loss he takes Thomas's advice, settling at the window of the spare bedroom, overlooking the road. The watch comes out from his pocket—he'd taken it off to get his hands wet—and goes on the sill, face up. He watches the secondhand _tick, tick, tick_ around the face.

The first three minutes passed in a blink; the last two are an age.

 _What am I to do,_ he wants to ask, but he's no idea to whom he'd pose such a question. Nevertheless he wants a simple answer.

He goes back to the washroom with fifteen or so seconds to spare, thankful he'd left the door wide open.

"Look at that," Thomas says. "He can count."

He's sweeter than he was before.

"You rinsed off," Richard says, surprised. He'd have expected to hear the water in the pipes.

"I did."

"You're ready to…?"

"Yeah."

So Richard steps out again to fetch towels from the linen cupboard, counting his steps as seconds, hoping he's faster than he thinks he is. The knowledge that both of them will go mad without time on their own is still at odds with the fear that Thomas will take advantage of any means he's given.

When he comes back Thomas is still in the bathtub, curled up with his chin on his knees, biting his lip, likely freezing. He looks up at him as he moves closer.

"I treat you like shit," he says bluntly. "Nobody with a brain would put up with this."

"Not forever, no," murmurs Richard, because he doesn't know that he can get away with a white lie—nor if it would be a white one at all, to make a promise he likely couldn't keep. But that's so far off in the future, the _hypothetical_ future, that to think about it much at all will result only in undue stress. God knows neither of them could do with more of that. "But in the meantime."

Richard stands. He reaches to give Thomas a hand up that is ultimately unaccepted—until he actually has to step out of the tub, when he braces himself with a hand upon Richard's shoulder. As soon as he's out Richard wraps him in a bath towel.

He's shivering. There's no way to tell how he'd react if Richard wrapped his arms around him, so he stays put but sets his hands upon his shoulders from behind, rubs at his arms, then pats him dry at his neck, his back. He says, "and you don't, actually." To his surprise Thomas leans against him, back to his chest; he takes of hold of one wrist—Richard beats him to the rest, bracing his arms around his chest and squeezing tight, comforted by the weight of his head on his shoulder, by the feeling of his damp hair against his neck. "You treat me very kindly," he finishes, his throat feeling raw again.

"Some of the time."

"Most all of it," Richard tells him, "when you're feeling well."

Thomas kisses him on the cheek.

* * *

_January 11, 1931_

_Dear Richard,_

_Your letter was very sweet! Mine is going to be very blunt._

_Dick, the problem is not that you have shell shock. If it was I would have scarpered by now because you told me that ages ago. The problem is that you have done a very bad job of telling me anything about it when all I want to do is help you. And I have a question about that actually. Have you ever got help from anybody besides me? You talk about "the men of your age and history" but when I'm in bed with you you do not behave as though you are well acquainted with any. This isn't anything special. I've seen it all before. I saw it every day for two years and I saw what caused it the two before that, and since then I've had a lot of time to think it over. That's to say, as far as I'm concerned you living with this is more commonplace than you think. You're not pathetic any more than they are so quit saying it. If I made my mind up you can too._

_You may tell me you don't want my help and so you haven't got to tell me anything more than you already have. Fine. I'll accept that. But if that is how it is going to be, don't come crying to me the next time you forget where you are in the middle of the night. Either I do right or I don't do anything at all._

_Anyway. I love you. Please remember that. You've said something similar before but I'll remind you, sometimes when you love somebody you have to take care of the things they won't, so that is what I am doing._

_T.B._

* * *

Being clean, clean-shaven and dressed makes a difference, and the sun stays shining. Partly cloudy, but it's enough—and what more can they ask for, living where they do?

They go for a walk round the block and back, most of it in silence, and then spend a bit of time in the back garden. Their own corner of earth is rather sad relative to their neighbours', but the marrow is finally ripe enough to pick all the same… he'll have to tell Louisa, seeing as she was the one who did the bulk of the work putting it in back in June. Richard did most of it thereafter, while Thomas stood by and offered affectionate commentary about his likelihood of a successful harvest.

Good timing.

He's about to draw attention to it (for the purpose of bragging, of course) when he sees him lunge out of the corner of his eye, then hears the spray of gravel and an " _oi!_ "

"Mercy, be _careful_ –"

—but Thomas has grabbed it with two hands.

It all happened in a blink, Christ.

"They're not very nice to your kind," Thomas tells the rabbit, "you probably ought to find some other garden."

Its nose twitches, and then it goes limp in his hands. Playing dead, Richard hopes. Thomas is looking at it intently.

He'd know, if it weren't.

"...good reflexes."

"Tell me something I don't know," says Thomas—dry, but soft. He strokes it between the ears with his thumb, then looks up at him, sheepish. "Though, I'm very bad at catching animals, in fact."

Ordinarily he's able to shoo them away. It's not, Richard imagines, too trying a task, given they're not exactly fond of people—the real trouble is getting them to go where you want them to.

"You don't look it."

He shrugs. "Maybe just dogs, then."

That one's a fun story.

Thomas is smiling, actually—small, but genuine, and the first proper one Richard has seen from him in days. He stands. "Well," he says, "we'd better go put this somewhere nobody's got snares."

They end up at a nearby park.

The rabbit, thankfully alive, if likely frightened out of its little mind, is ushered into some bushes; it darts off at a record pace.

"They should pay me, honestly," Thomas comments, still peering beneath the shrubs. He swipes his hands on his coat as he straightens up from crouching, looking at once irritated and proud—Richard doesn't know how he gets those things into one face. "I've got rid of more of them than those bloody traps have."

"To be fair, yours may come back."

"Yes, well, if they haven't got a fence up in a month I'm doing it myself."

"They're raised beds."

"Which should make it easier, shouldn't it?"

It's good to see him caring about something.

What with the detour they made it farther out than Richard had hoped they might. More fresh air can't hurt.

"I don't think they even eat them," Thomas continues. "Though, they may give it to the dog, I dunno… still, you've got people starving 'cause they're out of work and they're trapping those things and not even doing anything useful after."

"You'd be equally angry if they did."

Thomas actually comes to a halt; when he starts walking again, they're no longer in line. "No, I wouldn't be."

He takes being confronted with his own tiptoeing badly even on better days—bringing it up now is no doubt a mistake.

"Well," Richard says, trying a different tack, "it'd upset her either way, wouldn't it? Willa."

Because that is, he presumes, what this is all about, when you get to the meat of it. Principle.

"Most things upset Willa; she's _sensitive._ "

It's not the best impression of her mother but it's not meant to be.

"Doesn't stop you from doing your best to keep it from happening," Richard says.

It's an admirable quality.

"I'm being neighbourly."

"I'm not criticizing you."

"Yes, you are," he retorts.

Here they go again.

"I'm not."

"Why wouldn't you be?" Thomas snaps. "Who _wouldn't_ think it's pathetic to bother with some little girl getting upset about bloody rabbits when she's got to grow up eventually anyway?"

 _How the hell do you come up with these things,_ thinks Richard, on instinct… but he _knows_ why, and there's nothing he can do about it.

"Thomas," he says carefully. "I don't feel that way."

Thomas huffs.

"I think you made that up," Richard goes on. It only gets him an eyeroll. "And I wish you wouldn't."

"Yeah, well, _they're_ thinking it."

"Mrs Dixon speaks very highly of you."

"Her husband doesn't."

This conversation is a stark and unwanted reminder of how the day began.

"I don't see you that way, myself," Richard says, sidestepping. "But we don't have to talk about it now."

To his relief it works—because he's too tired to argue, likely.

"I just think they should let her have some feelings," says Thomas, still a touch defensive, but the venom thankfully gone. They'll finish out the conversation and then put it to bed. "She's six, what can it hurt?"

"And I'm sure she agrees with you."

Not soon after they leave the green they fall in step, as they so often do. It's mid-day, there are people out,—mothers and children, mostly. Working men on their way home to dinner; on a regular day Richard might be one of them. Their neighbourhood has all sorts and they've got friends round the corner, but at this time of day you wouldn't necessarily know it.

Thomas is looking same as he is. As they turn onto their own street he asks, "you ever think about how there's all these people who'd be great parents if they ever had the chance, only they're never going to be because nobody else thinks so?"

 _Like us,_ he means.

This topic of discussion may not be much better than the one they staved off.

"You know that I do," Richard says.

"Yes, well, so do I."

Of course Richard knew that already, himself.

"I don't want to think about it," Thomas adds, "but I do anyway."

How could he not, doing what he does day in and day out?

"So, you can see why I might be unhappy."

They reach the garden.

"Even though I've got you."

It is one answer to the question Richard has been afraid to ask.

Thomas unlatches the gate. Inside their building he stops to check the post; there isn't any. Richard is waiting on a letter from Fred—or, he will be. He wrote an S.O.S. missive the other night with only as many details as were necessary to get the point across.

Together they trudge up the stairs. On the second landing Richard pretends he wants a break, because he can tell Thomas needs one but won't admit it.

Going back inside the flat feels both old and new, the same and different. He can't put his finger on it. They weren't out for much longer than an hour.

Perhaps it's something in the air—he'd shut the windows before they left.

"Do our neighbours know?" Thomas asks. He sits on their little bench by the door and tugs off his shoes, staring at the arches of his own feet. "About us. I can't tell."

"Some may."

"Who, do you think?"

"I'm not sure… maybe the Dixons, the Merriweathers."

Across the stairwell and opposite below.

Thomas shakes his head. "They can't know," he says. "Neither of them."

"Why not?"

"Do you think they'd let me look after their children if they did?"

Richard hangs up his coat and scarf, then gets to his gloves. By the time he's even got a cuff unbuttoned Thomas is dressed for inside and in stockinged feet. Even on ordinary days Richard doesn't know how he does it; it's even more of a surprise now. "They might."

"Well, we've always known you had a wild imagination."

He knows it's optimistic.

As soon as Thomas is standing, Richard sits; Thomas leans sideways against the door, his head resting against it, his fingers twitching. To Richard's knowledge, he hasn't had a smoke since Monday. At the latest. "Miss Copley knows," he says idly.

"Really?"

"Yeah. Since I moved in, probably."

"I hadn't thought," Richard says.

"Well, I can't tell if she minds, exactly," Thomas says, as though Richard hadn't spoken at all. "She still says 'good day' and such, doesn't she? But I've got my eye on her all the same… her fancy man's a _divorcé_."

"Why do you know this?"

"Why d'you think?"

He wants to say paranoia, with how he talks about it, but it would be hypocritical. Thomas would call him on it, besides.

Years in the Royal Household and he picked up the same habit… who's sweet on a housemaid, who's got light fingers, who's moonlighting more than they ought, who's taking advantage of the letterhead and calling card… knowledge that would take care of any trouble with a snap of the fingers, if it ever came to it.

It never did.

And he's certain that there are plenty out there with the very same dirt on him.

"I don't mind her, as long as she keeps her mouth shut."

"I thought she was quite nice."

"Well, she is quite nice," Thomas replies, matter-of-fact. "But maybe she's so nice she'd prefer to live under good law-abiding citizens, did you think of that?"

"Thomas, I think about it daily."

At some point he hopes he'll get over it. They'll mind their business and they won't fret about everybody else, save for when their neighbours are moving house, when there are visitors, the like…

"Yeah."

"Only I think for most of them, it's not even crossed their minds."

"Do you?"

"Yeah." Richard tugs on his house slippers and stands; Thomas moves toward him as if magnetic. He loops his arms around him from the back, and Richard stands still as can be. "Most people, they can't even fathom that blokes like us exist at all."

"What happens when they do?"

Richard doesn't have an answer to that one off the top of his head.

"If they do and they mind it, all they've got to do is cry uncle, and before you know it," Thomas snaps his fingers in front of his face, "that's it and we're over."

"I just don't think people pay that much attention," says Richard.

Albeit he's the last man who ought to be criticizing another for paranoia.

"Dick, the second you think somebody's looking at us wrong you start inventing wives and children."

Which Thomas knows, of course… The only possible argument he could use here is that he doesn't have to do it from scratch anymore.

"Well," Richard says, thinking of Florence, Eva, and Josie… et al. They're a cast of thousands, really. He's invented plenty of people over the years and for plenty of purposes, too.

More serious ones, of late.

Thomas lets go, stepping around. "Well?"

"Well… I reckon you might give normal folks too much credit," he settles on—it's the truth, but Thomas just stares at him, unimpressed. Unimpressed in his usual fashion, nearly smirking, a flicker of something in his eyes. Over this, of all things. Richard manages a smile. "They prefer to mind their own business same as we do."

That's what this all hinges on, of course… that they'll charm the people who need charming, and that if they notice anything amiss, anything out of place, they'll keep to their own. Nobody wants to bring trouble where there is none.

They've all got skeletons in their closets, after all.

Which he supposes is what Thomas is getting at.

" _Well,_ " he says, and Richard can't figure out if he's making fun of him or not. "Shall I do the washing up?"

"–what?"

"For dinner." Dinner. It's that time of day already… and hadn't he just noticed it, outside? "We didn't eat breakfast," Thomas adds. "But it didn't get done last night, did it."

Why does this feel like a punch to the gut?

"You don't have to do the washing up, Thomas," Richard murmurs.

"Let me be useful." He's in the kitchen (that door stays open, too) before Richard can blink. "I'm not going to snoop round in the scullery, I promise," he calls.

There's no use arguing. Richard follows to find him already grabbing an apron off the hook; idly, he wonders when his heart will stop pounding when he's alone.

"Snoop all you like in there," Richard says, "you won't find anything."

"Figures," Thomas says. There's an overtone of chipper in his voice, but it's obviously not meant to be there. The overall effect is uncanny and uncomfortable. He needs to stop trying whatever it is he's meaning to do. "You are _tricky_ , Mr Ellis."

All this is like learning to drive, Richard thinks… every so often you nearly swerve off the road, only to get back in gear again at the last moment… or it's a train, derailing and self-correcting over and over—not something that's ever happened, to his knowledge, but the severity of it seems more appropriate.

As does the fact that, taking all into account, neither he nor Thomas are in control of the situation. Helpless passengers.

It's defeatist, he supposes, but it's what he's got on the inside of his head. Maybe it'll be fit for a letter.

Richard lights the stove.

Cooking is not his specialty, so the both of them are lucky he won't actually have to—they've got stuff leftover.

Tomorrow he'll need to order ice, and milk… they had better write a list. Under the circumstances he won't be swinging by the shops on his way home from work. He's lucky, really, that his siblings are giving him grace (Hannah had joked they wouldn't be, if he didn't bring in so many clients based on the previous job title alone) (he suspects she wouldn't have been joking at all if he'd given her the full story) here. Most of the other couples they know wouldn't be able to work anything out. And they've got friends who _aren't_ coupled, too, friends where he knows that they've only got so many people checking up on them, and from far away, at that…

They're lucky they get to be together and that they've had accommodations made, and they can't forget it. Can't afford to, for one, but also it'd be ungrateful.

He's never seen _this_ up close, though. Part of him wonders how much of what he's doing is necessary and how much isn't. _No handbook_. Thomas is ill, though; any person who took a long look at him would be able to see that. It's a white lie, saying it's something he'll get over in a week, but there's a limit to both grace and for how long either of them are willing to do nothing.

Healing won't happen unless they work at it.

In all his forty-one years Richard has never once desired to hurt himself, let alone to take his own life. He can't remember it ever popping into his head—even in the worst places he's ever been, the worst he's ever felt, those times when he was one of a few left standing, it was never on the table. If it happened to somebody else, his last conclusion was always _I don't understand what could lead a man to do a thing like that._ Things get bad, of course. They get terrible, especially for their sort of people.

But he's always found there to be light at the end of the tunnel, himself.

The fact that it seems to be lurking under the surface for Thomas no matter what his circumstances disturbs him more than he will admit.

It's not that he's never encountered it before. He has. What little he understands comes from that, and from the last six years of knowing and loving Thomas Barrow.

Only there's too much he _doesn't_ understand. It's too murky.

"Dick?"

Richard jumps about a foot into the air, startled.

Thomas is poking his head out from the scullery. "You keep trying to find a reason," he says. He bites his lip; his eyes shift, but then he's looking at Richard with so much focus he feels a shiver at the back of his neck. "But, there isn't one. Or not one I could tell you, at least."

Richard opens his mouth only to realise there's nothing he should say.

He closes it and nods, instead.

Thomas nods, too. After he's turned back around Richard returns to the stove. When he holds his hand over the saucepan, palm up, the steam is about hot enough to burn.

It feels as if he just lit the burner an instant ago. He must have lost track of time.

When he next looks over his shoulder Thomas is there behind him, the apron off. He sets a stack of dishware on the countertop and opens up a cabinet, but before he starts on putting anything away—

He wraps his arms around Richard's waist, presses a kiss to the back of his neck.

Richard sets his hands over his.

"I'm all right," Thomas says against his shoulder. Another kiss. Richard wishes they were properly embracing. "I am."

"Are you?"

"For now."

* * *

_April 5, 1932_

_Dear Richard,_

_You were right to telephone. Yes, I say that every time but I do it on purpose, because it's always true and don't you forget it. Well, this won't get to you til it is long over but I thought while I was up I would pen you something anyway. I hope by the time it reaches you you are happy and calm. If you're not maybe don't look at this one just yet, I shouldn't like to put you over the edge._

_Just think, in a few months you'll be in York with your family and an hour away from yours truly. I suspect things will be easier for you then. I know it won't all go away once you've moved (though wouldn't that be nice?) but I do think it will be better and you can quote me on that. I can't imagine it is very good for you being so tired, stressed and what have you all the time. It's happened more and more lately and I bet those things all go hand in hand._

_When you're nearer to me it will be easier for me to take care of you when you need it. I look forward to that. Of course I'll still be at Downton but we won't be trunk calling and it will be very convenient to see you on errands or half-days or the like so yes, I think it will be easier._

_You'll have more opportunities to convince me to leave this place, won't you? You'll like that. I have my doubts but when it comes to these things but it's true based on tonight it would be advantageous. I can't be there to hold you right now but please know how badly I want to be, if it would make you feel better. If it does anything at all to make the sights and sounds go away it is worth doing. I only wish I could now. After all you don't have anybody looking after you in the R.H. anymore do you?_

_Don't be afraid to be in touch again is what I mean. I hate to see you down. Especially when it isn't your fault, not in the least. Remember that. You tell me the same when I am in a bad way and I feel I don't say it enough back to you._

_Your loving,_

_T.B._

* * *

"You say you haven't done anything but you have."

"A bit late now, isn't it?"

Thomas nuzzles the top of his head before sitting down again—and he moves the chair this time, too, to be nearer, angling it toward him. Close enough he can bump his foot against Richard's ankle. "No," he says, "you did, before."

Looking back, not every time he should have.

"You've been badgering me to eat more for the last month, for one."

Richard can't tell if he's meaning to be ironic, given they've been sat at the dining table for some time now and his plate remains mostly untouched. (He wonders if _putting the kettle back on_ wasn't an excuse to let it alone.) He sits back, appraising. "You're saying I'm a nag," he says.

"I'm saying you paid more attention than you think."

"Obviously it wasn't enough," Richard returns.

Thomas shrugs. He pushes his parsnips to the side of his plate with his fork, then back to the centre. "Probably would've happened sooner, if you'd just carried on pretending like nothing was different."

They're probably cold by now. There's no need for a show.

"And you kept asking me what's wrong all the time."

"Evidently something was."

"Yes, well, that's the bloody point, is you noticed, but you keep talking like you went blind or something when you didn't."

"If things got that out of hand-"

"Dick, this _isn't about you_."

It hits like a blow to the head, though Richard is aware that it probably shouldn't.

Still, that won't stop him from feeling it.

"Sorry," he murmurs, because he doesn't know what else to say.

"It isn't," Thomas repeats. "It's got nothing to do with you, so stop acting like you could've– could've _solved_ it."

"I don't mean to make it about me."

"I know you don't," he counters, "but you do anyway, don't you?"

Richard feels his hands getting restless; he folds them in his lap, instead. _You do this too often,_ he thinks to himself.

Thomas takes a bite of his food, then makes a face.

Definitely cold.

"... remember, the Earth doesn't revolve around you, Mr Ellis."

"I know."

But he's not sure how else to express what he's been feeling.

Thomas looks at him with raised eyebrows. He again stabs at his vegetables.

"If you're not hungry we'll put cellophane over that," Richard says, with a nod toward his plate. "You can have it for tea."

Perhaps an obvious attempt at getting on to a new topic, but something worth saying all the same.

Thomas drops his fork at the side of his plate, _clink,_ and lets his head fall back, staring up at the ceiling. He closes his eyes, and beneath the table Richard takes his hand and squeezes. "Thank you."

"No need."

"No, there is." He pauses, wetting his lips. "At Downton I thought… why are they wasting all this on me?"

"How do you mean?"

"Room, board, money. Time. All that."

"Recently?"

He sits up straight, shakes his head. "In '25."

That sounds like a spin on the truth.

"...and before, I'll not lie to you, though not as much. And—maybe last year, even, when I thought they were about to sack me."

That doesn't.

"I didn't think it came out of nowhere, yeah."

"Dunno if I deserved it the whole time I was there, though."

"Thinking it, you mean?"

"No."

Richard can't place his tone. _How deep does this go_ , he wonders. _How far back._ In some ways this conversation—most of their conversations, in the past two days—is a contradiction of many of those came before it: since he's known him Thomas has been proud, sure of his own worth and ability. Where does all this sit, under the surface?

"You were excellent at your job," he says.

"'Course I was. At all of them."

There's the one place he never wavers.

The problem comes in when he decides the jobs aren't actually worth doing—somewhere in his pile of letters Richard's got a few that bring that piece into it. He remembers reading them and never quite knowing what to say.

"Then it's what you were owed," Richard tells him, "as your compensation."

They have had this conversation many times before, though he can't remember when, or why.

"Men need to eat and sleep, Thomas," he goes on, and Thomas returns to poking at the food he isn't going to eat, "and I don't know if it helps to think of it that way, but if you take a step ba–"

"You know it's worthless, don't you?"

And didn't he see this one coming...

"Service," Thomas says definitively. Richard swallows the rest of the tea in his mug and tries to remember a time he's ever won this argument. "It doesn't matter."

"Well–"

"It never mattered, not in any way," resolute. "Between us we wasted, what, half a bloody century looking after other people who could've done it themselves, if they put an ounce of effort into it, and for what?"

 _We, God, don't put this on me, too,_ he always thinks, every time. He was never on the level of his colleagues but deep down he did always think the work was particularly special, that it was important, knowing what he was responsible for and what was up to him to sort out, though in his head he more often than not believes otherwise–

"What could possibly go wrong if– if the somebody's got the wrong ascot on or the chairs aren't at the right mark on the bloody yardstick?"

"Plenty," Richard says evenly, "and I'm sure you've seen it happen."

"Because they made it up, Dick, they made all of it up, and we just went along with it for no reason–"

"For no _reason,_ come on, Thomas, it was our job–"

"That's the point, is it was our _job_ to spend all those hours on our feet doing everything asked of us even though none of it made a difference to anything–"

"Perhaps not on a grand scale–"

"You tell me what my work counted for, then," Thomas cuts in. "Mine, not yours; nothing Lady Mary did ever affected what was what in the bloody Commonwealth."

Richard finds that for a moment he is so taken aback that all he can do is stare—it shouldn't be surprising; he's seen Thomas like this, before. And yet…

"I'll wait."

Only he can't win, here, can he? Anything he says will be thrown back at him, in one way or another.

"I'm not going to argue about this," says Richard slowly.

"So you think it was worthless, too, then. Same as me."

"It wasn't worthless," _hold your ground, that's all,_ "and nor are you."

"I didn't say I thought _I_ was worthless–"

"Could we just set this aside?"

Thomas blinks at him as if uncomprehending.

"Please, Thomas."

He huffs. "Well, since you asked so nicely…"

The magic word.

That settles it, thankfully. Thomas picks up his fork again but only, it seems, to rub his thumb back and forth over its handle; this time, Richard reaches over to still him, hand over his. He squeezes.

It almost gets him a smile.

Richard asks, "do you think we'd ever've met, if we hadn't been in service?"

"You know that's not what I was talking about," Thomas mumbles.

"I do," he says. "But it's something to think about, isn't it?"

"I suppose."

It's plain to see Thomas is worn out. And why wouldn't he be? This whole day has been a back-and-forth and an up-and-down—no tears so far, from either of them, a fact of which Richard is appreciative, but he doesn't exactly like this better.

Where they just left off is about as much as he can hope for.

"Right," Richard says, "I think I'd like to go up and rest, now I'm finished, if you care to join me?"

It's the kindest way of saying _I think you're in need of a lie-down._

Thomas knows that, but he agrees anyway: he stands, and Richard has to stop him from clearing the table and taking care of the leftovers all by himself. He doesn't know whether he should be or not, but it's what feels right to do, and he gets no protest.

Once in the bedroom they get out of their waistcoats and jackets but leave the rest on, and before getting into bed Thomas embraces him, squeezing around his ribs, and leans in with his ear to his chest. He sniffles, but that's it.

No words. No other sounds.

They leave the drapes open. _Sunshine._ It'll be dark in a few hours, most likely.

They're up on the top storey, the windows are dormers… Richard thinks sometimes they ought to leave them open more often, but then he'll walk along the street and look up, and find he's got a clear view of somebody else's. And there's a household across the way that could get a look in easy if they decided they wanted to.

"I thought I'd be happy," Thomas says quietly. He's clinging to him, head on his chest, one hand under a brace strap clutching the fabric of his shirt and the other up at Richard's shoulder. Moments like these have always felt special, but he wonders if maybe he's been taking them for granted lately. If now that they're together all the time he's let something tarnish. "Anybody else would be happy, in my place."

He's right, in some respects.

They've got friends who'd do just about anything to get out of bedsits, out of factory housing, out of servants' quarters. Get some privacy. Make a life with somebody special; quit settling for moonlight jaunts.

Not much more than a year ago, the two of them were in exactly that place.

Trouble is, it's not possible for everybody.

"So why aren't I?"

That's just the question, isn't it? And it's a painful one even to think about, let alone to hear him say aloud. Richard's happy, himself. Even with the squabbles and the spats and all the little things here and there that have made setting up house tough, he's never been so happy in his life. They have something, here. Something splendid. Something he wouldn't trade for the world.

He adjusts his arm to pull Thomas closer, to hold him near as he can—slowly, slowly he's begun to relax, and Richard can take solace in this, in this little thing he can do. "I think you were right," he says quietly, "and it's the same as me."

"Something's off upstairs."

"Yeah."

"So I'm stuck like this."

"Well, it seems to me like it comes and goes."

Thomas doesn't say anything.

"Doesn't it?" Richard prompts.

"Perhaps."

Richard can't tell if he's meaning to be cryptic or not. _I don't remember what it felt like,_ he'd said earlier.

Remembering isn't something he can do for him.

"We should sleep," Thomas says abruptly. "Weren't we going to sleep?"

For now that will have to settle the matter.

"Were we?"

"Well, it's what you wanted me to do, wasn't it?"

"Figured you'd doze off after a bit, yeah."

He'd slept for nearly fifteen hours, the night after. Long enough it was worth counting back, long enough that Richard worried he might have taken something without his noticing—he hadn't; he was just tired. He's got good reason to be even setting aside what's happened.

Though Thomas scoffs, he also curls up closer, nuzzling at Richard's chest, one leg bent across his own. He settles with his ear right over his heart.

They don't say anything more.

Richard can't tell exactly when it is Thomas crosses over from _drowsy_ to _sleeping_ : it's as if he blinks and that's it, he's calm. Once he has, though, it's easier to relax. A weight off his shoulders. Perhaps until this moment he hadn't realised just what a toll this was taking.

He hadn't felt anything at all like relief the night prior, but that had been under unique circumstances—more touching, more tears, less chatter.

Maybe the time of day makes a difference, too.

Both of them need to get more sun. Until the season turns again (and he imagines it will do shortly) they can keep the windows propped open, let in some fresh air… He's had the thought all day thus far, but surely it means something. There's a reason they used to make such a fuss about dragging the ill to the seaside.

Probably some still do, but Richard is no longer encountering them the same as he once was. He's got his own life to worry about now, not anybody else's—unless he so chooses. And he's certainly made his choice here. Richard doesn't fall asleep, himself (though his leg, under the weight of Thomas's own, does). Too many thoughts in his head. He manages to keep them in line, though, and that's the important thing. His body will rest if not his mind.

 _Rest_ , he has come to know, is very important.

When Thomas wakes up it's with a sudden jerk and a sharp intake of breath. He lifts his head and narrowly avoids knocking into Richard's as he does, blinking.

He looks him over with an almost confused expression on his face: _who put you there,_ of sorts.

To be fair, Richard almost never wakes up in the same position as he went down. He moves too much. Thomas has complained before about the kicking.

"Did you sleep?"

He always knows these things right off the bat, doesn't he.

Richard shakes his head, hums his disaffirmation.

"So, what, you just kept lying there while I did?"

"It certainly looks as that, doesn't it."

Thomas pushes himself up all the way, props himself up on his elbow and stares at him.

He sets his hand upon his cheek.

"Thank you," he says.

"You're very welcome."

"You don't have to."

"I want to, Thomas."

"Maybe, but you're going to wear yourself out," Thomas tells him, stroking his thumb at Richard's lips. The look on his face is not _happy,_ but it is caring. "I don't want that for you." He licks at his lip, averts his eyes, but leaves his hand where it is. "And... I don't know if it'd be very good for me, if you..."

Richard kisses his thumb.

Thomas looks back at him. ''I don't know what'd happen," he murmurs.

He's lying down, but his heart seems to plunge into his stomach all the same—Richard reaches out to set his hand at his waist, to scrunch the fabric of his shirt with his fingers, pressing with his fingertips just so. And Thomas doesn't push him off.

"I want you here," Richard says firmly.

"I know you do," says Thomas. He's being incredibly patient. Nearly uncharacteristically so, especially where the last few weeks are concerned. There have been exceptions, but all in all he's been on a shorter fuse. Just another thing Richard should have brought up but didn't. "But that doesn't change the fact that I don't." Richard shuts his eyes. Thomas's hand travels up his face, his thumb at his cheek, then his temple… and then his hand is in his hair and he's moving his fingers back and forth, soothing—same as he does when the nerves get to be too much, when he wakes up in the middle of the night. "I'm sorry, but it's the truth."

"Well, it's all the more reason to stick around, then, isn't it?"

"You'll hate me by the time I get over it, if it's just you."

"I would never hate you."

"Dick, you need _help._ "

His insistence is so overpowering that Richard opens his eyes. Thomas's face is set, his gaze stolid.

"Look, you can't– at Downton they had three people looking after me in bloody shifts and even they got tired of it, and they didn't have to cook or clean or any of that on top of things, so who knows how it'd get to you?"

"At Downton you were bedridden and anaemic."

Different circumstances. There was more looking after that had to be done then, surely.

"Yes, I was," he concedes, "but you still… you're tired, aren't you."

It's not really a question, but after everything, there's an important distinction to make. Richard says, "I'm not tired of _you_."

"You're tired of _managing_ me, though," Thomas says. "And between you and me you're going to have to keep doing it, because I'm not exactly in top form at the moment, am I."

"You're saying you want somebody else here."

"I'm saying I'm probably a two person job, and I don't exactly enjoy admitting–"

"It's helpful," Richard says, cutting him off. "Thanks for bringing it up."

"Yeah."

Richard wants more than anything to kiss him; he refrains. But he tilts his head up towards Thomas's hand, tries to say _I love you_ with his eyes. "You'll have to tell me who'd make you most comfortable," he murmurs.

"Phyllis or somebody, I don't know. She's done it before."

She's also about an hour away.

"–I don't mean always, and it doesn't _have_ to be her, just, you won't be comfortable leaving me alone for very long, will you, but you'll have to get away from me _some_ time, so if somebody could stop by…"

"We can telephone tonight," Richard says, and then, knowing the likelihood of either of them going very far from the flat twice in the day, corrects himself with, "or tomorrow."

"And we'll have to go for a walk to do that, won't we."

"In this case it's an advantage, I'll admit."

"So you give up, then?"

Their neverending couple's spat.

"No," Richard says. "Not just yet."

"Hmph."

But he nods. There's something Richard likes in his eyes.

He settled back down again, back to lying on top of him, and Richard still feels the ghost of his hand at his cheek. "I love you," he tells him, "you're very dear to me."

This time he's not kept waiting for a response.

"I love you, too," Thomas murmurs. Then he hums, still in place before he adjusts to rest his head further up at his shoulder, his lips at his collar and his breath warm upon his neck. Richard holds him more tightly. "I don't think I knew just how much I could love somebody til I met you… you know that, don't you?"

The words are romantic enough to set his heart racing.

Richard kisses the top of his head. He hopes it gets some of it across, though he knows it won't convey it all—all the love and the care, the hopes and dreams, everything they've shared with each other and crafted together over the years; he wants him to feel all of it, and to know how precious Richard finds him. He wants him to know it as deep down as he can.

They'll work on that in days to come.

"I do."

**Author's Note:**

> DA really managed to just flagrantly ignore all existing guidelines everywhere for appropriate portrayal of suicide, suicide attempts & suicidal ideation in fiction............... look I have had it tough in life but at least I have never attempted suicide and then had everybody I know be "it's okay. we saved you. now you can change and become a good person! also we are going to treat you better now because we feel responsible for your suicide attempt but not for any of the actual feelings that got you to it" like.... okay....?! Oh my god. It upsets me so much. and that is not even getting into the completely bonkers wacky recovery time + the fact that he got shoehorned into coming back to Downton because at his other job he was COMPLETELY MISERABLE?
> 
> Anyway it has been found that around 20-40% of people who have previously attempted suicide will attempt again (based on studies with patients undergoing modern mental healthcare treatment), and people who have engaged in self harm or suicide may be 25 times more likely to die of self-inflicted means. People with suicidal tendencies may reattempt at any stage in their life and under any circumstances, and significant life changes can often increase suicidal ideation/chance of attempt even if they would seem to the outside observer to be "positive".
> 
> And this is in the 1990s-2010s when in general mental health treatment is robust and supported with psychiatric medications that did not exist until the 1940s at the earliest! 
> 
> I think if you read my fanfic you can probably guess what my personal connection to this stuff is but I'll leave some things a mystery [rihanna wink gif] Anyway I am not really interested in writing a "Downton Abbey Series 6 Except They Handle That Better" fanfiction for many reasons, so a lot of what I would like to evaluate & consider & explore etc etc wrt Thomas's canonical extended mental health issues is getting covered in this verse, because reasons.
> 
> I am on tumblr as [@combeferre](https://combeferre.tumblr.com).
> 
> I really appreciate your comments & kudos as always, though I very rarely these days have the energy to engage with them ! <3 :-( I spend most of my time when I am not at work/sleeping writing, I just haven't actually finished anything lately... have written lots of words but in a very haphazard junebug fashion. Hopefully more will come in the next two months as I get some breaks from work w/ ~the holiday season~. I wrote most of this fic last-last weekend (like 2/3 of it, ~10k ish) and the rest has been written in the 8ish days since lol
> 
> Thank you for reading <3


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